Signed off and flaked out.

We picked up our all-important Tatton sign off slip today confirming that we’ve cleared the site and can go home. The paving and walls went to the Levenshume allotment team who arrived in force yesterday with a large van and seemingly limitless energy. Pics and details to follow…. Ged came today to help take the backdrop down and we parted with some cash to get the last bits of rubble spirited away. Most of the plants are now back here, awaiting re-potting and stripping of their layer of Tatton mud. Talking of which, it’s still raining. In our 17 day Tatton Show stretch of building, manning and breakdown, we had two dry days. I’m flaked out on the sofa, dreaming of a week off – and knowing I’ll be back in harness on the nursery willingly tomorrow.

Back here the rain and warmth has pushed everything along. We have courgettes, carrots and runner beans galore, as well as a small but delightful crop of Cosse Violette purple french beans. The sweetcorn plants are dripping pollen on the sticky cob tufts below in a perfectly synchronised act of fecundity. I’ve lifted all the onions and the last of the new potatoes – big fat things they are now and still so firm and good. Shame we’re not really eating potatoes in our new reduced carb world (well Dave isn’t – I’m still tucking in shamelessly and needfully – got to keep some flesh on my increasingly skinny bones). So I’ve put them in a box in the potting shed – we’ll see how long they keep.

The cloud wrapped round this silver lining of cornucopia is of course blight, which has attacked the outdoor tomatoes once again. Friends, I tried. May and June were lovely and the swelling green toms might, just might have made it. But if the cold doesn’t get them, then the blight surely will. Like I said, to much contention, don’t bother, folks. Buy local tomatoes or grow them in a greenhouse.